Operation, administration and maintenance (Operation, Administration and Maintenance, OAM for short) is an effective supplement to an interface/link protocol, and provides the interface/link protocol with an operation, administration and maintenance mechanism. An OAM function generally includes continuity check, performance measurement, fault location, and the like, which are performed on a link or a path.
In the prior art, an OAM standard about a link often lags behind a standard about the link, and an OAM function generally needs to be supported by link processing hardware, as a result, when an OAM standard is introduced, many devices are incapable of supporting the OAM function, and even if the OAM function is added in a later phase, different devices use different methods for processing an OAM packet, and therefore, there is an urgent need to put forward a flexible method for processing an OAM packet, so as to adapt to a release of the OAM standard and to different devices.